10.  The applicant was born in Kazakhstan and came to Latvia in 1954, at the age of 12, when it was one of the fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) of the Soviet Union. She has been permanently resident there ever since. In 1966, after finishing her studies at Riga Polytechnic Institute, she obtained a job at the chemical complex in Olaine (Latvia), working in a laboratory at a recycling plant.
11.  In 1973 the applicant was assigned to the regional division of the Environmental Protection Monitoring Department, which was part of the USSR Ministry of Chemical Industry. Until 1981 she worked for a State enterprise attached to the Ministry, with its head office in Kyiv (Ukraine). She was subsequently placed under the authority of a subdivision of the same enterprise, which was based in Belorussia (present-day Belarus) and was itself subordinate to a division with its head office in Dolgoprudnyy (in the Moscow Region, Russia). The enterprise in question was an all-Union enterprise (предприятие всесоюзного значения) and was thus governed by federal law and under the authority of the USSR central government. The applicant’s salary was paid by monthly post-office giro transfer, from Kyiv and Moscow. Notwithstanding her successive reassignments, the applicant continued to work at the recycling plant in Olaine. Furthermore, throughout this period she remained affiliated to the same local unit of the centralised Soviet trade union for workers in the chemical industry.
12.  On 4 May 1990 the Supreme Council (the legislative assembly at the time) adopted the Declaration on the Restoration of the Independence of the Republic of Latvia. On 21 November 1990 the Environmental Protection Monitoring Department was abolished. As the enterprise had become autonomous, the applicant came under the direct authority of the plant’s management.
13.  In August 1991 Latvia’s independence was fully restored. Subsequently, in December 1991 the Soviet Union, the State of which the applicant had hitherto been a national, ceased to exist. The applicant therefore became stateless. Following the enactment on 12 April 1995 of the Act on the status of former USSR citizens without Latvian or other citizenship, the applicant was granted the status of “permanently resident non-citizen” (nepilsone).
14.  In September 1993 the applicant was made redundant as a result of staff cutbacks. She immediately signed a contract with another employer, based in Riga, for which she worked until her retirement in 1997.
15.  In August 1997, after reaching the age of 55, the applicant retired and asked the Social-Insurance Board for the Kurzeme District of Riga (Rīgas Kurzemes rajona Sociālās apdrošināšanas pārvalde) to calculate the amount of her retirement pension (vecuma pensija). In a letter of 21 August 1997, the Board notified her that, in accordance with paragraph 1 of the transitional provisions of the State Pensions Act, only periods of work in Latvia could be taken into account in calculating the pensions of foreign nationals or stateless persons who had been resident in Latvia on 1 January 1991. It appeared from the applicant’s employment record (darba grāmatiņa) that from 1 January 1973 to 21 November 1990 she had been employed by entities based in Kyiv and Moscow. The Board therefore calculated the applicant’s pension solely in respect of her years of service before and after that period. As a result, the applicant was awarded a monthly pension of only 20 Latvian lati (LVL – approximately 35 euros (EUR)).
16.  The applicant lodged an administrative appeal against that decision with the State Social-Insurance Fund (Valsts sociālās apdrošināšanas fonds), which dismissed the appeal in a letter of 4 September 1997. The Fund noted firstly that there was no evidence in the recycling plant’s archives that the applicant had been employed there. Furthermore, according to the Fund’s administration:
“Since you had an employment relationship with an employer based outside Latvian territory – although you carried out your work in Latvian territory – this period cannot be taken into account [in the calculation of your pension] as the employer did not pay our Republic’s taxes.”
17.  In May 1998 the State Social-Insurance Agency (Valsts sociālās apdrošināšanas aģentūra), which had replaced the State Social-Insurance Fund, asked the Social-Insurance Department of the Ministry of Welfare (Labklājības ministrijas Sociālās apdrošināšanas departaments) for an explanation as to the application of paragraph 1 of the transitional provisions of the State Pensions Act in the applicant’s case. In a letter of 5 June 1998, the Department explained that, since the applicant belonged to the category of persons concerned by the provision, only the periods in which she had been employed by entities based in Latvia could be taken into account in calculating her pension. The Department added that the only effective means of resolving the issue would be through agreements between Latvia, Ukraine and Russia on mutual recognition of periods of employment.
18.  The applicant subsequently brought an action against the Social-Insurance Agency in the Riga City Latgale District Court. In a judgment of 1 December 1998, the court dismissed her application. The applicant appealed to the Riga Regional Court, which in a judgment of 4 May 1999 likewise found against her. It held that, since the applicant’s salary had been paid to her by an employer based outside Latvia, her employment within Latvian territory was to be treated as an extended business trip and could not give rise to any entitlement to a State pension for the period in question. On an application by the applicant’s lawyer, the public prosecutor attached to the Riga Regional Court appealed on points of law to the Senate of the Supreme Court.
19.  In a letter of 9 September 1999, the Registry of the Senate informed the applicant that the case had been included on the agenda of a public hearing on 6 October 1999 and told her the precise time at which the examination of the appeal was due to start. However, as the hearing had opened before the time indicated, the Senate decided to consider the case before the parties had even arrived. After hearing the submissions of the representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office in favour of allowing the appeal, and after deliberating, the Senate, sitting as an extended bench of seven judges, dismissed the appeal, holding as follows:
“... On the basis of the documents at its disposal, the appellate court observed that from 2 January 1973 to 21 November 1990 Ms Natālija Andrejeva had been employed by enterprises based outside Latvia.
The appellate court was therefore correct in finding that the period during which Ms Natālija Andrejeva had been employed by enterprises based in Ukraine and Russia could not be taken into account in calculating her pension.
In accordance with paragraph 1 of the transitional provisions of the State Pensions Act, pensions of foreign nationals or stateless persons who were resident in Latvia on 1 January 1991 are calculated in respect of periods of employment ... in Latvia ...
A period of employment within Ukrainian and Russian enterprises cannot be treated as a period of employment in Latvia within the meaning of the above-mentioned Act.
Section 1 of the State Pensions Act defines socially insured persons as [persons] who have paid, or whose employer has paid on their behalf, social-insurance contributions towards a State pension, in accordance with the State Social-Insurance Act.
By virtue of ... the State Social-Insurance Act, all employees of entities subject to tax in Latvia are covered by the compulsory social-insurance scheme.
Ms Natālija Andrejeva’s employers, being based in Ukraine and Russia, did not pay contributions in Latvia. Accordingly, there is no reason to conclude that, having worked for enterprises situated outside Latvia, Ms Natālija Andrejeva was covered by the Latvian social-insurance scheme.
The Senate considers that the cooperation agreement on social security between the Republic of Latvia and Ukraine, which was signed in Kyiv on 26 February 1998 and came into force on 11 June 1999 – after the date of the judgment appealed against – is not a sufficient basis for a court to find that the public authorities acted unlawfully ...”
20.  Since she had been unable to take part in the hearing, the applicant requested the Senate to re-examine the case. In a letter of 13 October 1999, the President of the Senate’s Department of Civil Cases informed her that the Civil Procedure Act did not provide for the possibility of reviewing a judgment after its delivery in such circumstances. However, he apologised to the applicant that the hearing had started early and assured her that all the arguments of the parties had been properly examined.
21.  In a letter of 13 December 1999, the Ukrainian embassy in Latvia informed the applicant that, by virtue of the agreement between the two States which had entered into force on 11 June 1999, she was entitled to have her pension recalculated to take account of her work for the Ukrainian enterprise. The embassy therefore invited the applicant to apply to the relevant social-insurance department to recalculate her pension. However, the embassy informed her that the pension “in respect of the Ukrainian period of employment” would not be paid “until the conclusion of inter-State negotiations on the arrangements for payment of pensions”.
22.  In a letter of 4 February 2000, the Social-Insurance Agency informed the applicant that with effect from 1 November 1999, on the basis of the above-mentioned agreement, her pension had been recalculated ex nunc to take account of her years of service for employers based in Ukraine. As a result, the monthly amount of her pension, adjusted in accordance with the applicable scales, was LVL 30.21 (approximately EUR 43).
23.  In June 2008 the monthly pension received by the applicant amounted to LVL 98.35 (approximately EUR 140), consisting of the principal sum (approximately EUR 125) – corresponding to the minimum subsistence level guaranteed by the State – and a supplement (approximately EUR 15). These amounts are index-linked and adjusted every six months to take account of inflation and the increase in the guaranteed minimum wage.
24.  On 2 and 3 October 2008 respectively the Latvian Parliament and the lower house of the Russian Parliament approved the cooperation agreement on social security, signed on 18 December 2007 (see paragraphs 44-45 below). According to the calculations supplied by the applicant, if the agreement were in force and her years of service “in Russia” were taken into account today, her basic pension would be increased by 15% and the supplement by 35%. The Government stated that the total monthly amount received by the applicant would be LVL 115.48 (approximately EUR 164) in that event.